lication to what, from another point of view,
was a mere political revolution. But with them passive obedience and
divine right had been raised to the level of a great religious principle
for which they were well content to be confessors. It must have added
much to the moral strength of the nonjuring separation. Argument or
ridicule would not make much impression upon men who had always this to
fall back upon, that 'non-resistance is after all too much a doctrine of
the Cross, not to meet with great opposition from the prejudices and
passions of men. Flesh and blood and corrupt reason will set up the
great law of self-preservation against it, and find a thousand
absurdities and contradictions in it.'[102] How thoroughly Kettlewell's
term was adopted, and how deeply the feeling which it represented was
cherished by the saintliest of the High Churchmen of that age, is
nowhere more remarkably instanced than in some very famous words of
Bishop Ken. In that often quoted passage of his will where he professed
the faith in which he died, the closing words refer to the Church of
England 'as it stands distinguished from all Papal and Puritan
innovations, and as it adheres to the doctrine of the Cross.' The
special interpretation to be placed upon the final clause somewhat jars
upon the ear, although not without interest in illustrating the strong
religious principle which forbade the transfer of his political
allegiance. Dr. Lee, who had excellent opportunities of knowing, says,
'there cannot remain any manner of doubt'[103] that Ken used the
expression with particular reference to the sense in which his friend
Kettlewell had used it.

When once the Hanoverian succession was established, the doctrine of a
divine right of kings, with the theories consequent upon, it, passed
gradually away; and many writers, forgetting that it was once a
generally received dogma in Parliament as in Convocation, in the laws
as much as in the homilies, have sought to attach to the Church of
England the odium of servility and obsequiousness for its old adherence
to it. But as the tenet died not without honour, dignified in many
instances by high Christian feeling, and noble sacrifice of worldly
interest, so also it had gained much of its early strength in one of the
most important principles of the Reformation. When England rejected the
Papacy, the Church, as in the old English days before the Conquest,
gathered round its sovereign as the emblem and